‘This is a witch hunt. We are the witches, and we are coming,” say the two women towering above the stage. This pair of giantesses break the silence and command the space. They have eyes like steel, they read from books like reckoning angels and they wear long skirts and breast plates, suggesting something ancient yet futuristic.

But it is the present under urgent consideration in this collaboration by Rachel Mars and Nat Tarrab, the winner of this year’s Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust award, which has been made with an all-female team. Because theatre is programmed so far in advance, it is unusual to see a show that responds so directly to the moment.

Current events may cast a new light on a piece conceived months ago, but Roller is that all too rare show: one that urgently considers the now – in particular, recent accusations such as those about Harvey Weinstein, which have gone on to reveal the amount of harassment many women endure. It is magnificent, angry, slyly funny and necessary. It’s got its skates on.

Mars and Tarrab utilise the all-female world of roller derby, one of the world’s fastest growing sport, and use it as a metaphor to explore how a different world might look, how a different space might operate and how anger might be most usefully channelled. There is no traditional narrative, but there is a narrative arc as the show begins with a traditional sport’s centre floor being rolled away and ends with a lone female skater holding the space, moving forward. It redraws the lines: sometimes quite vividly and in bright yellow.

In between, the show has echoes of Naomi Alderman’s book The Power as it examines how women might respond to millennia of oppression. There is a great moment when Mars threatens to smash the face of a male member of the audience, which leads Tarrab to comment: “I’m just questioning whether a plan based on being angry is actual progress.” This is a show brave enough to use theatre to think out loud as it considers whether – as those playing roller derby do – it is possible to repurpose anger into strength through teamwork and reimagine the world. I loved its honesty, and the fact that it is so unapologetic.